


Don't Look Down (No Really, Don't)

by medjc



Series: Tumblr Requests [1]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Tumblr Prompt, in which I exaggerate rhys' fear of heights for the sake of the fic, someone get this man a xanax
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 04:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16111127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medjc/pseuds/medjc
Summary: They’re standing at the base of an old signal tower, light from Elpis shining down on the flats around them and reflecting off the parts of the metal framework that aren’t rusted to all hell.“I don’t like heights,” Rhys informs Fiona for what must be about the hundredth time as they both consider the structure in front of them.He can see her nod in his peripheral. “I know you don’t.”





	Don't Look Down (No Really, Don't)

**Author's Note:**

> An old request I did on Tumblr months and months ago. Anon wanted something short and sweet and I'd had this idea knocking around in my head for a while.

They’re standing at the base of an old signal tower, light from Elpis shining down on the flats around them and reflecting off the parts of the metal framework that aren’t rusted to all hell.

“I don’t like heights,” Rhys informs Fiona for what must be about the hundredth time as they both consider the structure in front of them.

He can see her nod in his peripheral. “I know you don’t.”

“Is that why you neglected to tell me until the very last second that the fuse you needed me to replace was at the top of goddamn Barad-dûr?”

“The top of… what?”

Rhys sighs, bringing up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.”

A cool breeze rolls through, making him shiver. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that Fiona dragged him all the way out here at whatever unholy hour of the night it is right now. He genuinely has no idea how she even convinced him to do this in the first place, considering he has a pile of overdue paperwork collecting dust on his desk and a meeting with a potential investor first thing tomorrow morning.

There’s plenty of other things he could be doing right now. _Plenty_ of other things.

And yet here he is, standing around in the middle of nowhere with his shoulders hiked up around his neck and bouncing on the balls of his feet to try to generate some semblance of warmth like a jackass.

“Sooo.” Fiona bumps her hip pointedly against his. “Are we going up or what?”

Rhys scoffs in her direction, fisting his hands in his sleeves. “Somewhere along the line, I think you started severely overestimating how much I’m willing to risk my life for you.”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “It’s not _that_ tall. You wouldn’t die if you fell. Well, okay, you probably would. But it would be quick and painless!”

He rolls his eyes. “That is sooo not reassuring.”

Huffing impatiently, she stomps around to stand right in front of him and plants her hands on her hips. “Look, I told Sasha I would take care of this before tomorrow because we all know how cranky everybody gets when the radio isn’t working. August opens his stupid mouth way more often and Athena threatens to kill everybody at least twice an hour and Sasha spends so much time trying to pry those two apart that nothing ever gets done. Annoying pop music is the only thing that keeps us all from self destructing.”

Rhys thinks—and not for the first time—that he is _very_ lucky to have his own private office. “If you were going to take care of it, then why am I here?”

“Because,” she starts, and then falters for a moment before continuing, “I… sort of broke it even more and now I don’t know how to fix it.”

He blinks a few times. “Broke… what, exactly?”

“The fuse? I think?” she says, but it sounds more like a question than a statement. “It was stuck in there pretty good so I tried to rip it out, but, well.”

She makes this vague hand gesture that he’s not sure actually conveys anything meaningful, but he thinks he gets the gist.

“I know it’s a lot to ask for,” she continues, “but I could really use your help on this one. Plus we’re kind of already out here and it’s a half hour walk back to base, so.” She steps forward to lay a hand on his arm. “Please.”

Shaking his head and trying to fight back the impending sense of doom twisting his stomach into knots, Rhys motions towards the very unsafe looking ladder on the side of the tower. “After you.”

It’s a long way up, the structure creaking and groaning ominously around them and the metal railing shuddering with every tiny shift of their weight. He half expects the entire thing to come crashing down before they even make it to the maintenance platform, but the structural integrity of the tower remains sound and they get up to where they need to be in one piece.

It’s colder and breezier up here than it was down below, but at least the view is sort of nice in its own barren and desolate way. The flat desert around them is cast in a purpley hue, sporadic gusts of wind kicking up sand clouds all across the landscape. Even the sky looks different, somehow more vast and unending than it had looked from the ground.

The ground that is. Very far away. He can see that once he makes the grave mistake of looking all the way down.

Shit.

He stumbles backwards until his back hits the central beam of the tower to get a safe distance away from the edge. Which might have been way more helpful had the platform they’re standing on right now been made of something solid instead of grated panels, because he can still see just how high in the air they are through the slats. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing his heart to stop pounding and his breathing to slow because dammit, he’s fine, nothing bad is going to happen and everything is _fine_.

But what if it’s not? What if the supports start collapsing, or what if the rails around the perimeter give way and one of them falls, or what if what if what if—

“Hey,” Fiona says softly as she takes his hands from where they’re clenched into fists at his sides and carefully works her fingers between his. “Hey. Look at me.”

“I don’t like heights,” he tells her again without opening his eyes. “I really, really, _really_ don’t like heights.”

“I know.” She runs her thumb over the back of his knuckles, and her hands are so warm compared to his. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t— I didn’t know this would be—” He can hear her take a breath and blow it back out. “It’s okay, Rhys. You’re okay.”

That’s funny, because they’re, like, hundreds of feet in the air right now, which definitely doesn’t _feel_ okay. But he forces himself to focus on the sensation of her tracing shapes over the back of his hand until he feels less panicky and more just incredibly, nauseatingly anxious. Which, frankly, still sucks, but at least it’s a considerable step down from before.

Once he feels like he’s able to, he cracks open his eyes enough to look down at her. She’s watching him so carefully, so _tenderly_ , green eyes wide and searching as she continues to hold his hands in her own. And then she smiles up at him, a little hesitant, a little crooked, but still full and warm and earnest.

“Better?” she asks.

He’s not sure how to answer that. It still feels the same— the paralyzing fear of being in danger of plummeting to his death at any moment. But it’s also different, somehow. Farther away. Like he’s here with her and everything else is just a step or two behind them, looming right over his shoulder and chattering viciously in his ears but never quite able to catch all the way up.

So. Maybe not better, not in the sense that it’s all magically gone away. Maybe just… easier.

“A little,” he finally decides to say for simplicity’s sake, and then clears his throat a bit awkwardly. “I, uh. Might have to throw up here in a second, but—”

She takes a very generous step away from him at that. “Over the railing, not on me, please and thank you.”

Wow. He guesses he just found the limits of her helpful patience. Brutal. Rhys gives her the flattest look he can muster. “I was kidding.”

Fiona gives him an even flatter look in return, clearly disbelieving. “If any of it gets on me, I swear I’ll push you over the edge.”

He doesn’t doubt it. After he’s actually sure he really isn’t going to puke, he turns to make his way around the platform towards the fuse box. Fiona attempts to explain what she did as he struggles to figure out how in the hell she even jacked it up this badly. The fuse she tried to pull out wasn’t even the one that was busted. He tells her as much but she doesn’t believe him, insisting that she, quote, “Knows a blown fuse when she sees one, goddammit.”

Which she clearly doesn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t be having to fix her mess right now. She doesn’t have a lot more to say once he points that out. But she does shoot lots of dirty looks in his direction as he finishes the job she attempted to start, like it’s his fault that she can’t handle the cold, hard truth.

Once he replaces the correct fuse and fixes the one Fiona messed with, the lights on the tower come back on and everything seems to be functional. Rhys lets out a deep sigh of relief when they finally get back down on the ground where they belong, swearing to himself up and down that if Fiona _ever_ asks him to do anything like this again, he’s changing his name and moving to the Southern Shelf to dig a complex tunnel system in a snowbank so he can live out the rest of his life in relative peace.

He’s so busy fantasizing about his future as a hermit that he doesn’t notice Fiona creeping up behind him until she pokes him in his ribs to get his attention. “Hey.”

“ _Hey_ ,” he gripes back, spinning around to catch her hand before she can jab him again because dammit, she _knows_ how ticklish he is.

But it doesn’t appear that her intention is to start a tickle fight, because she rolls her eyes and shakes her wrist free of his grip to twine their fingers together instead.

“I didn’t get to say thank you before you were hauling ass down the ladder,” she says, taking a few steps closer. “So, you know. Thank you. I mean it. And I’m sorry for tricking you to get you out here in the first place.”

Sighing, he brings his free hand up to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “You do know if you had just told me, I still would have helped, right?”

“Would you have, though?”

Rhys has to think about it for a second. Like, really think about it. “Okay, yeah, no. Probably not.”

She grins and stands on her toes to press her lips gently against his. He’s not sure if she means it more as an apology or just as an incentive to stop being mad, but either way, it’s surprisingly effective. She lowers herself down to stand flat on her feet again after a minute and he follows her, making her huff out a laugh against his mouth that turns into a sigh when he runs a hand up her side. Her breath catches when he pulls her closer by her hips, and he swallows a groan when she closes her teeth down on his bottom lip. When she starts to pull back, he catches her, pulling her close again and again to give her fleeting kisses until she swats him away with a laugh.

“That was easy,” she tells him as she moves both her arms up to wind them around his neck. “One kiss and I’m already forgiven. I’ll have to remember that for next time.”

“Hey, don’t you dare make me feel cheap,” he pouts as he slides his hands past her coat to run his thumbs along the seams of her vest. “And who said you were forgiven? I’m obviously still furious. Seething with rage, actually.”

She nods. “Right. Of course. Luckily, I know exactly what buttons to push to get back on your good side.”

He raises an eyebrow at her dubiously. “And… what buttons would those be?”

“I don’t want to spoil the surprise,” she says. “But I’ll give you a hint.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Two words.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You and me.”

“Right.”

“In your bed.”

Rhys makes this big show of mulling it over before gasping dramatically and releasing her to grab her by the shoulders. “ _Pillow forts_?”

Fiona laughs so loud it echoes across the plains, taking him by the hand and not letting go the entire way home.


End file.
